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It has the feel of the final scene in the movie “Back to the Future” where Doc
Brown is feeding banana peels and other garbage into the Mr. Fusion appliance
on top of the DeLorean to fuel it.

But what is happening in Vista, California, right now is not in any futuristic
movie, it is the next wave of good, clean, green ways to generate electricity
without substantial adverse effects on the environment.

Not quite Mr. Fusion, but close.

Forward-thinking city officials have approved a special use permit which allows
Envirepel Energy Inc., to move forward with the balance of the permits required
to finish construction of its renewable, bio energy facility and begin operation
of it for an initial 18-months.

It will be using a process called “gasification combustion” which cleanly burns
green waste and wood, to produce electricity. Not to be confused with “incineration”
during which refuse is burned in lieu of burial in a landfill, gasification would
not degrade the quality of the environment, result in long-term or cumulative
impacts or have substantial adverse effects on human beings, either directly
or indirectly, say experts.

After reviewing plans for the facility, the Vista Planning Commission voted unanimously
to give it the go-ahead.

“We supported it,” said John Conley, acting community development director for
the city. “We think it is an exciting, new technology.”

He said that while a trash-to-energy concept is not new, the drawback in the
past was the air pollution they produced.

“If they (Envirepel) can reduce their emission, and they can do it in a fairly
urban area, then they have proven their technology on a larger scale,” Conley
said. “Meeting air pollution control is part of the requirement.”

If the company can meet the requirements, it will be given an extension for a
total of the five years, he said.

“The entire purpose of this system is to produce energy with practically zero
emissions,” said Anthony Arand, CEO of Envirepel. “If it doesn't operate at zero
pollution emission, it shuts down.”

Arand said the Vista project, which he named “Kittyhawk,” after the first in
flight Wright Brothers, will be one of the first facilities to use emissions
scrubbing equipment for the reduction of Global Warming greenhouse gases.

The project is housed in a building in the Vista Business Park.

Green waste from private waste disposal companies instead of being dumped in
a landfill, would be hauled to the site. Same goes for slash from clean up from
forest fires from the Cleveland National Forest provided by the National Conservation
Service.

The green waste will be ground and fed into a ceramic lined steel oven. The bricks
will heat up and create methane gas. The gas would then be burned to heat a boiler
that Arand calls “The tea kettle,” and the steam from the boiler would drive
a turbine to produce about 2,000 watts of electricity per day. Two-thousand watts
of electricity is enough to power about 2,000 homes for an entire day, Arand
said.

Some of the energy produced by Kittyhawk would used to power the plant and the
rest would be sold to San Diego Gas & Electric.
In the very near future, Arand proposes setting up additional bio energy plants
at landfills to handle on-site green waste, turn it into energy and almost as
important, keeping it out of landfills.